Regime change in Syria could lead of mass persecution of Christians

Citing the example of Iraq, Philip Jenkins writes that the fall of the Ba’athist regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria could lead to the rise of an Islamist regime, sparking a mass persecution of Christians.

“The West might like to see the Ba'ath regime crushed as thoroughly as its counterpart in Iraq, but as on that earlier occasion, the religious consequences of intervention could be horrible,” writes Jenkins, author of The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice and The Next Christendom: The Rise of Global Christianity. “Before planning to intervene in Syria, Western nations had better start printing several million immigration visas to hand out to refugees seeking political asylum, and demanding protection from religious persecution.”

2% of the nation’s 19.6 million residents are Catholic, according to Vatican statistics; an estimated 8% are Syrian Orthodox.

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